Oh Crap
by Mirlle
Summary: A BtvSWoT crossover, answering challenge 767 on Twisting the Hellmouth, which requested Willow somehow making her way into the Wheel of Time Universe. This story includes everyone's favourite Wicca, sore feet, coarse language, horrendous outfits, assorted
1. Prolouge

This is a response to Challenge #767 on Twisting the Hellmouth, which requested a crossover with BtVs and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time Series. The Challenge stipulates Willow somehow finding herself in the WoT Universe. I have deviated somewhat from the original challenge.

Neither BtVS nor the Wheel of Time belong to me, the former is the property of jos Whedon and mutant Enemy and the latter belongs to Robert Jordan. No money is made from this...although I kinda wish it were.

Hope you guys enjoy, please R&R.

Prologue

"Willow."

"Wake up Willow."

"WILLOW!"

"Aaargh!"

With a crash, Willow Rosenberg woke, and lost the precarious balance on the chair she had been perched on, only to come crashing to the floor in a flurry of red hair and pages covered in her meticulous scrawl. Scowling, she blinked away the last remains of sleepiness and glared at the person who had so rudely interrupted her sleepy time.

"You fell asleep researching again, didn't you?"

Grinning down at the still floored Willow, Dawn Summers extended a hand to give her friend and fellow ex-Scooby a boost.

Grumbling under her breath, Willow brushed herself off after having accepted Dawns help, partly because her jeans and the burgundy blouse she had 'liberated' from Faith's closet had acquired a fine layer of Archive dust, but in the most part to cover her sheepish blush.

In the year since their group had defeated The First and ended Sunnydale's existence as Demon Vacations Spot No. 1, Willow had, somewhat reluctantly, accepted a position in Giles' rapidly expanding re-development of the Watchers Council. Now that the known number of newly activated Slayers was known to be around the five hundred mark, Willow was becoming somewhat uncomfortable with the responsibility of her new position, acting both as Research Girl and teaching basic magic to potential Watchers.

It wasn't that she didn't enjoy her job, but she missed being out in the field instead of being cooped up in a building all day, teaching students - who sometimes had more than a decade on her - how to float a pencil. Buffy had decided, now that the Council had everything more or less under control, that she was taking a lengthy, much overdue, holiday and had deposited Dawn at Council headquarters only to disappear off the face of the planet. For some bizarre reason, she had taken Andrew with her, not that most members of the revamped Council could be heard to complain about that particular development.

"So, what were you looking at last night?" asked Dawn, then frowning slightly she added, "you have been here all night, haven't you? You're still wearing the same clothes as yesterday and you look all…rumpled."

With a squeak, Willow righted herself, and attempted to smooth out the creases adoring her attire only to quickly give it up as a hopeless job; wrinkles decorated her clothing and would no doubt only be banished by ironing or some form of heavy – possibly black -magic. Sighing slightly, the redhead, brushed a hand over her eyes. However much sleep she had managed to catch simply hadn't been enough.

"Nothing special really, just trying to adapt this spell I found in one of the Darli'it spellbooks. You know, those demons we found in Cleveland, the one's that lived under Wal-mart and used puppy livers as catalysts in their regenerative potions? Well, they're good spells, but I don't want to have to use dog parts so I was trying to see if maybe I could use calf liver instead…turns out that if you use those, the potion explodes and everything in a ten foot radius turns purple."

Picturing a disgruntled and tremendously violet coloured Willow, Dawn stifled a giggle and nodded, attempting to appear serious, "Purple…coulda been worse though, like pink."

"Ugh, don't even joke about that," Willow shuddered "Pink? With my hair colour? Molly Ringwald eat your heart out."

"So, you gonna keep trying or give up?" Dawn asked, already knowing what the answer would be.

"Give up? Moi? Never! I'm gonna kick this potion's behind, if I have to go through the entire animal kingdom to do it…I thought I might try sheep next, wanna help?"

"Ugh, you know, while I enjoy playing with entrails as much as the next moderately sane person I think I'll give this one a miss and take some of the girls to the market instead," said Dawn, smiling affectionately, "want me to bring back any animal parts for you?"

Sighing slightly, Willow resigned herself to another sticky afternoon spent by herself, mucking with innards. "No, I think I have everything I need, Giles keeps a well stocked abattoir…which now that it occurs to me, is actually quite worrying."

"Oh I think he mentioned something about his third cousin twice removed being a butcher or something and then I stopped listening…you know Giles…" here Dawn trailed off, yes Willow DID know Giles, hence her surprise at his penchant for pre-packaged meat products, "anyway, I'm off, try not to blow up anything priceless while I'm gone, 'kay?"

Grumbling at the retreating girl's back, Willow returned to the pre-prepared vials of the potion she had brewed up yesterday. Knowing that the first couple of experiments were bound to fail, she had cooked up enough samples to keep her in experimentation for a good long while, all she had to do was add the substitute livers and the potion would be (hypothetically speaking) good to go.

Grasping a piece of sheep liver with a set of sugar tongs she had 'accidentally' borrowed from Giles' favourite tea service, Willow muttered a quick prayer to all and any deities that might be listening and dropped the sweetmeat into the potion vial and immediately assumed the fallout position, ie. curled into the foetal position and screwed her eyes tightly shut.

When the sound of explosions failed to assail her delicate hearing, Willow decided to take that as a good sign and opened one of her eyes.

The other eye quickly followed upon discovery that neither her own self, nor any of the objects in the vial's vicinity had adopted any strange or other worldly colours.

She decided to take this as an extremely good sign, the potion was displaying neither signs of sentience (unlike experiment 31/C - liver of pigeon with a smidge of parsley…she'd spent three quarters of an hour attempting to pry the now self-propelling potion off her copy of "Cauldrons for Dummies" while it quoted pages 31-67 at her) nor behaving in any manner that might be construed as homicidal.

In fact, all it was doing was bubbling slightly in a completely inoffensive manner.

Humming cheerily, Willow discarded her protective oven mitts and reached over the vial to grasp her clipboard and make notes.

It was, perhaps only somewhat inevitably that the potion took this moment to react.

With a sound reminiscent of three dinosaurs belching, the potion made a remarkable impression of Mt. Vesuvius erupting and surged upwards. Willow snatched back her arm but not being a Slayer her reflexes – honed by years of potion evasion as they were – simply were no match for the wrath of experiment 37/A.

With a squelch in which Willow later swore she heard a note of triumph, the potion soaked into the sleeve of her borrowed shirt, gave off a mushroom cloud of greenish smoke and then she blacked out.

-----------------------------------------------------------

When Dawn returned to the laboratory three hours later, the only hint that Willow had ever been there were her gently smoking boots, still next to the table covered in potions.

Of Willow herself, there was no sign.


	2. Stupid Trees

Chapter One

Stupid Trees

Willow was confused.

The first sight that had greeted her upon waking was a tree.

Running through several possibilities in her mind she arrived at the conclusion that experiment 37/A was clearly a potent hallucinogenic and it would therefore be in her best interest to just lie down and wait for both the tree and the ringing in her skull to go away.

Opening her eyes several minutes later, she established that while her head was feeling better, the tree was not only still there but this time around it seemed to have brought some friends.

Quite a few friends actually, Wicca extraordinaire she might be, but Willow was a born and breed California girl and didn't hold much truck with forests.

Forests, however, seemed to hold quite a bit of truck with her, because there they were, - tree upon tree, doing treelike things…such as stand…and be green, err…

Clearing her throat delicately and edging away from the nearest tree, whose roots she felt were coming close to committing a crime against decency, Willow managed to not giggle in a manner she felt would not at all be in keeping with the world of sanity.

"Uhm…eek?"

Whether this was a battle cry or call for help was not clear to Willow or the trees, but both parties felt that it could have been done better.

"Ok…trees, nice trees…err…where am I?" when this received no answer she resorted to somewhat cruder methods by squeaking, "Uh…help?"

Willow looked at the plants around her hopefully; they however simply looked back at her with unnecessarily vacant expressions.

"Oh. Okay, so no help from the trees. That's just as well, I don't know what I'd do if the trees started talking to me. Uhm, you're not, are you?" she added somewhat suspiciously, eying the nearest tree. When it failed to respond, she exhaled gratefully, tension easing from her shoulders. Thank god for that, talking trees would have no doubt unhinged her severely.

"Ok, Willow. Pull yourself together. You are clearly in a forest, which is full of trees…ok, check on the trees. Uhm, over there is a shrub and there are some bushes, and oh the surprise…more trees," turning in a wide circle, Willow established that yes, the old adage about forests was true, after a certain point you simply couldn't see it anymore because all the trees got in the way.

"Hmm, stupid potion. That's it; I'm never playing with sheep livers again. I've learnt my lesson, animal parts are of the bad…I'll just have to be a lesbian Wicca of the vegetarian variety…but I'm not wearing Birkenstocks, a girl's got to draw a line somewhere."

Having come to this conclusion, Willow felt reassured to the point that she decided that these were rather nice trees after all.

Since the only thing that met the eye in either direction were yet more trees, Willow shrugged to herself, closed her eyes and spun on her heels.

Coming to a stop perilously close to - yes, you've guessed it – a tree, Willow shrugged once more and move off in the direction she'd come to face.

Sometime later, Willow could be seen, stomping determinately through the undergrowth, while growling highly unflattering comments about trees under her breath.

For all she knew, she'd been walking for hours. During a rare moment of foresight, she'd taken off her wristwatch and left in on her bedside table, knowing that if she left it on, one of her experimental potions would probably eat it.

So here she was, watchless and surrounded by foliage.

While walking, Willow had tried to amuse herself in any manner possible. She'd attempted to cast a locator spell on herself, which had worked in a manner of speaking, even if it did yield some rather odd results.

According to her spell, she definitely existed, which at this point she found strangely reassuring.

Everywhere else, however simply…didn't.

During her years as a practicing Wicca, Willow had developed an affinity with the world that sheltered her. Her magic came from the earth and all living organisms on it were connected. What she felt here however was something very different. While she could still feel this earth and its inhabitants, she was quite sure she wasn't in the same place she'd started off on.

Her earth was relatively young, while this place felt old beyond words, and weary as if it had been injured numerous amounts of time and was still trying to heal.

Wherever she was, one thing she could say for sure, this was neither Cleveland, nor the world consisting entirely of shrimp. That only left about an infinite amount of alternative dimensions she might have slipped into.

Without knowing exactly where she was, she couldn't attempt to go home - it was a well known fact of magical travel that one had to know one's starting point nearly as well if not better than the desired arrival spot.

So, all in all, the only thing she could do was stomp and hope she would find a village before she either died of hunger or went Darth Willow on the conclave of trees.

Later still, after much marching, Willow decided that all trees should be banned.

After much tripping over fallen branches, stumbling over mossy rocks and once nearly breaking her ankle when she stepped into an abandoned rabbit warren, Willow decided that she was beyond caring about the fact that plants supplied all carbon based life forms with the oxygen so necessary for breathing. As far as she was concerned, these trees were just darn inconsiderate in the way they insisted on gathering here, in her way, without taking even the slightest bit of notice of her glares.

After hours with only shrubbery to talk to, Willow had resorted to playing 'I Spy" with herself. Needless to say, she won two games out of three, as more often than not, the object she spied was some form of vegetation.

At first she'd attempted to make the game more difficult for herself by referring to the trees by species, but after much faffing about, she was forced to acknowledge that whatever type of plants these were, she'd never seen them before, so had to resort to referring to them by names she'd assigned according to their general demeanour.

So far she had spied a 'large skulky tree that's planning something', 'small crooked tree with an agenda', 'medium kind of tree that keeps looking at me' as well as dozens of subtypes thereof.

All in all, Willow thanked this opportunity for teaching her that she was not cut out for the hermitic life.

At one point, she had attempted to figure out what time it was by evaluating the height of the sun, in which case she could also figure out in what direction she was heading.

Unfortunately, she quickly had to abandon that plan as the trees very effectively blocked all sights of the sun, lending her surroundings a permanent twilight kind of light. Willow comforted herself with the knowledge that it was possible that in this dimension, the sun set in the east, or that there were three or maybe it never set at all.

So wrapped up was she in her internal musings on all the fun things one could do with firewood, that she completely failed to notice when the trees gave out.

She only snapped out of her fugue when she literally walked into the river.

River was actually quite a large exaggeration, more of a stream really, but it was still very wet and very cold, a fact Willow quickly found out when she slipped on slimy rock and landed inches deep and on her ass.

Just as she gratefully remembered that at least there was nobody around to witness her moment of slight clumsiness, faint sounds of laughter reached her ears.

Shooting out of the stream like a cork out of an overexcited bottle of champagne, Willow whirled and came face to face with her observer.

"Oh man Red, I wish I had a camera, I swear, I ain't never gonna see that look on your face again!" gasped the last person Willow would ever have pictured giggling in a forest…no scratch that, giggling full stop.

"Faith!" she screeched, "what…how…argh, I'm all wet!"

"Comes from sitting down in a river."

"Really, that's so helpful!" snapped Willow, already irritated at the brunette Slayer, simultaneously remembering that there was something odd about Faith being in this particular forest at this particular time, "Wait a minute, what are you doing here?"

"Beats me," Faith said nonchalantly, "one minute I was watching TV in my room, then whoosh, next thing I know I'm in a freaking forest. Walked around for a bit, then heard you shouting at trees so I decided to follow you. Hey, isn't that my shirt?"

Willow had the grace to look slightly embarrassed as she distracted the Slayer's attention while sneaking her potion stained sleeve behind her back. Faith was known to get somewhat testy about foreign substances coming in contact with her apparel.

"Uh, is it? I hadn't noticed…hang on, what do you mean you followed me? You mean, you FOLLOWED me? Without so much as a 'hey there'?"

"Uh huh," agreed Faith, leaning against a nearby tree, "I was gonna say something but I figured you were in the middle of a good long rant and I better let you finish. By the way, about 'Mr. Loomy Broody Pants Tree'? That was a real good talking to you gave him, I'm sure he'll think twice before he offers you anymore of his lip."

The only response Willow could give to that was to go slightly red and splutter indiscriminately.

"Watch it Red, say it don't spray it, alright?" said Faith with an insufferable smirk that reminded Willow just why she didn't like the other girl very much, "so I'm guessing you did a spell and it went wrong?"

"No," replied Willow heatedly, "it was a potion, and for you information, not ALL my spells go wrong and anyway, this sort of stuff happens to everyone occasionally, after all, its not like magic is an exact science!"

"Uh huh," nodded Faith, "and the important thing is that YOU believe that.'

"Well it's true!" Willow nearly shouted in her exasperation, if there were two things that got right up her nose, they would be people questioning her spell casting ability and the brunette Slayer. Not necessarily in that order either, "Anyway, why are you here when the potion only tried to maul ME?"

"Quality control?" quipped Faith.

"Ha-ha, very funny," mumbling under her breath, Willow squelched out of the stream and muttered a quick drying spell under her breath. By the time she came to a stop facing the other girl, her clothes and hair were once again dry and this time around wrinkle free.

Giving Willow a disdainful once-over, "That is so my shirt!" Faith snorted and proceeded to march along the river bank.

Pausing only to throw, "Well? Are you coming or not," over her shoulder, the Slayer stalked through the gathered flora.

"This is so typical," Willow muttered under her breath, trotting to catch up with the younger girl. Her day had just officially become worse.


	3. Sticks and Stones

Chapter 2

Sticks and Stones

Faith was humming.

Willow found this deeply disconcerting; as far as she was aware the other girl only expressed happiness - or any other emotion for that matter, by beating stuff up.

But no, here she was, humming cheerily and skipping over exposed tree roots and fallen brunches, while Willow herself stumbled along. All in all, Faith was taking this whole situation far too well and it was making Willow extremely nervous and ever so slightly suspicious.

If anyone had asked her to predict the Slayer's actions should she find herself catapulted into a dimension that seemed to be made up entirely of trees, without a way home or any knowledge of her exact whereabouts, Willow would have answered that the reaction would probably not be favourable and could she personally not be around when Faith found out it was all her fault?

Thinking along this vein, Willow eyed the girl in front of her warily; she had at some point stopped humming and was instead whistling vigorously.

"What are you doing?" she said after the suspense finally got too much for her.

"Hm?" responded Faith absentmindedly, - she'd been in the middle of a particularly pleasant daydream about the kinds of vicious creatures one could expect to find in a forest this size and wasn't happy about the interruption, "I'm not doing anything."

"Yes you are," responded Willow forcefully, "you're being cheerful. It's creepy! Don't you understand what's happening here? We're in a forest, full of trees and…and we don't have any way home, and I keep expecting you to get mad and rip my arms off and you're whistling! Like you're actually happy! It's scaring me."

"Well excuse me for thinking the glass is half full,' said Faith with a sideways look one usually reserved for the mentally impaired, "I happen to like forests. These woodsy woods are great, just smell that fresh air!"

Willow stopped in her tracks, quaking in horror. This was all starting to make a terrible kind of sense. The creature before her clearly wasn't the Faith she was acquainted with.

"Oh my god, you're your own doppelganger! You are, aren't you!" she squeaked, "Please don't eat me, I have virtually no nutritional value! You'd be better off gnawing on a root, honestly!"

"Jesus Christ Red, what's your damage?" asked the dark Slayer, brows furrowing, "I like forests, so what. They're peaceful."

Noticing that this did not seem to be alleviating Willows fears she added gently, "I'm sure I'll get bored soon and then take it all out on you, how's that?"

"Uhm, actually, that's not helping," quaked Willow.

"Well tough shit," came the response, "I'm a Slayer, not a babysitter. For god's sake woman, you're an all-powerful witch, possibly the strongest in the world and here you are, shaking in your booties. Just pull yourself together already!"

"I am…together! It's just…this place doesn't feel right," she admitted, slumping her shoulders.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, this place, this whole stupid planet feels familiar, like our earth only a lot older and kind of really…sad. And when I did that locator spell earlier, it didn't react in the way it's supposed to," Willow admitted.

"Why?" asked Faith, wondering vaguely if the witch would just shut up if she humoured her, "how was it supposed to react?"

"Look, everything is connected, right? I'm connected to the earth and through it I can technically feel anything on it, provided I concentrate hard enough and have the necessary strength to back myself up with, you with me so far?"

"I guess," came the reply, "I'm not really into the whole mojo thing, more of a violence kinda person."

"Really, I hadn't noticed," Willow answered, unusually sardonically, "anyway, as I was saying, because I'm directly connected to the earth and it's energy I can feel stuff, especially other people using those forces…other magic users if you will."

"Ok," replied Faith, pausing momentarily to sharply kick a rock that had the audacity to be in her path.

"Well that's the thing, I should be feeling other witches or whatever, but there's nothing there!"

"Hmm," Faith responded, and Willow was surprised to note that the other girl actually seemed to be thinking about the problem, "well maybe this world just doesn't have any magic users…maybe the force or whatever just doesn't work here...no, that's not right, if that was the case, your drying spell wouldn't have worked, right?"

"Right," nodded Willow, pleased that there was someone else to talk this puzzle through with, "all the necessary forces are here, it just feels like no one's been around to use them in aeons and right now they're feeding on each other. It feels…tight, like a balloon with too much air in it."

"It's not gonna blow, is it?" the Slayer asked, and Willow thought she detected a note of alarm in the question.

"No, I don't think so,' Willow found herself wanting to reassure the younger girl, "it'll just find another way to get rid of the excess pressure, - bursts of wild magic, unexplainable phenomena, that kind of stuff."

Faith looked thoughtful for a minute before speaking, "So, if you keep doing magic, the stress levels will go down and the balance will right itself? Just keep doing magic then."

Willow smiled at the thought, "It doesn't quite work on that scale I'm afraid. I could do the spell I did to make all the Potentials into Slayers three times over and it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference."

"Oh," said Faith, and resumed her unconcerned expression, "well in that case don't worry about it."

"Huh?" responded Willow, pausing to stick out her tongue at a cunningly hidden tree root that had attempted to trip her, "what do you mean?"

"Well, seems to me there's not a lot of use in worrying about something you can't do anything about. Bit pointless really, so you might as well not bother." And more importantly, not hassle me with it - Faith added in the sanctity of her own head.

"Uh, that's kinda a weird attitude for a Slayer to have, don't you think? Shouldn't you be all about fighting unbeatable odds and stuff?" Willow wheezed. Faith had longer legs than her, not to mention that whole Slayer stamina deal, and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to conduct a conversation and keep up with her at the same time, especially considering that the vegetation seemed to be turning decidedly hostile.

"What can I say," replied Faith grinning back at the wilting Redhead, "I've always been a rebel."

There wasn't a lot Willow could respond to this without dredging up the past, an activity she was a lot more reluctant to indulge in since that unfortunate trying-to-end-the-world incident. So, the two girls continued walking in silence, each in her own world.

For all she knew, they had been walking along in silence for hours before Faith called for Willow to stop.

"Yo, we should find somewhere to make camp for the night. It's gonna get dark soon."

Looking about her, Willow frowned. The forest was cast in the exact same shade of gloomy non-light as it had been all day.

"How can you tell?"

"Shit Red, you're really not a woodsy kinda person, are you," Faith laughed, "I thought it came with the whole Mother-Earth-Goddess package. What happened, they lose your application?"

Not waiting for the other girl to answer, she veered off from the stream they had been following. A few paces to her left, she'd spotted a hollow which seemed to have been formed where a tree had fallen over. This spot, sheltered on one side by the fallen trunk and on another by a small rock formation seemed to her as good a place as any to stop for rest.

"For your information," Willow answered huffily, dropping wearily onto a comfy looking moss covered stone, "Xander and I went camping once when we were little. We both got lost in the woods for hours on end and when we finally got back, squirrels had peed all over my sleeping bag. Anyway, I'm from Sunnydale, remember? We've found that if you come across a dark, secluded area full of trees that offer a convenient amount of shade, it's generally a good rule of thumb to just turn and walk the other way."

"Good point," agreed Faith from the spot where she was crouched attempting to build a fire-pit. Thinking of something to add she stopped fiddling with sticks and turned to her companion, "Hey, when you did your locator spell thingy, did you find any signs of people or demons?"

"Uhm," replied Willow, "to be honest I didn't bother checking. I was sort of busy reassuring myself that I was real. Be quiet for a sec, ok?"

Not waiting for the other girl to murmur her assent, Willow closed her eyes and concentrated. Long gone were the days when she needed candles and incense for such simple stuff as locator spells, now all she had to do was picture a map of her surroundings in her minds eye, - a very simple feat under the circumstances as she knew from personal experience that the outlining regions consisted solely of trees – here and there interspersed with a smattering of shrubberies.

A couple of seconds later and she was dispelling the breath she had been unaware of holding. Opening her eyes, she turned towards Faith.

"Nope, nothing out there bigger than a rabbit…at least I think it was a rabbit…can't be sure in this place. There's a large gathering of energy about twenty miles north of here, basically we just have to follow the stream and we'll hit it."

"Village?" Faith asked while she attempted to light a fire using her Zippo lighter.

"I think so, the energy readings correspond with some big mammal type life forms so it's either a village maybe a large gathering of deer. Or cows…could have been cows," she added wrinkling her brows when she heard Faith snickering.

"Sorry, but 'energy readings correspond with mammal life forms'? Been watching a lot of Star Trek lately?" the Slayer tittered, still vainly trying to get a fire going, "that's it, I give up. Clearly I lack the pyrotechnical expertise of a fucking caveman. Damn wood is wet, must have rained recently."

"Allow me," Willow said smiling sweetly. Absently she waved a hand at Faith's admittedly feeble attempt at a fire and allowed herself a small grin when the other girl was forced to quickly scoot backwards in order to save her eyebrows.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, adding a saccharine smile just for good measure, "guess I'm just not used to my strength in this place. My bad."

"Right," grumbled the dark Slayer, lying back and vainly trying to find a comfortable spot in the rock she was leaning against, "just for that little stunt you get to take first watch."

"Crap," muttered Willow under her breath. She had a feeling this was going to be a long night.


	4. Lions, Tigers and oh my, what's that!

Chapter Three

Lions, Tigers and…oh my, what's that?

Faith was dreaming.

In her dream, she was standing in front of a huge, very steep mountain, at the top of which rested a giant egg.

Surrounding the mountain were various groups of people - to the right and left were a large gathering of men and women respectively, and all were throwing fire at the egg - though some were trying to destroy it, while others attempted to encourage it to hatch. Behind the mountain was a gathering darkness, a great looming shadow the Slayer could not see through, but she knew that whatever was hiding within it and coming swiftly closer meant the egg and everything else in existence great harm.

In front of her, attempting to scale the mountain were thirteen men and women. They were hindered in their efforts to reach the egg both by the slipperiness of the mountainside and their own comrades, - whenever one person gained a head start on his or her colleagues, the others would respond by pelting the upstart with rocks and lightening bolts in order to bring him back down to their own level. Still, even with this amount of infighting, the thirteen steadily gained on the location of the egg.

In response to this, the fire bolts thrown by the women to the left and the men to the right gained in ferocity, as some switched their focus from the egg to the climbers, but it was to no avail. Whenever one of the thirteen was successfully destroyed, another would rise from the ashes and start the arduous climb from the beginning.

Just as the foremost of the climbers reached the ledge on which the egg rested, tremors shook the mountain and the contents hatched. From the ruins of the once beautiful shell rose a great gold and red patterned dragon, who raised his head to the skies and uttered a cry so piercing, Faith was sure it should have woken her up.

But it didn't, and the dragon turned his attention to the people attempting to reach him. With a roar of fury, he spat out a great burst of flame that fully engulfed his enemies and when they screamed, so did he. The thirteen scorched men and women fell to the ground at the foot of the mountain, only to begin their climb anew.

Having rid himself of his most pressing enemies, the dragon turned on himself. Scratching, clawing and biting at his own side, the beautiful animal seemed determined to rip himself in half.

Not being able to watch this insanity a moment longer, Faith was about to attempt to reason with the majestic beast when a tall, balding and bespectacled figure sporting tweed stepped into her path.

"Extra mature Cheddar? Or would you prefer a mild Harvati with dill?" asked the strange man.

Before Faith could reply, the dragon stilled in his intent on injuring himself and turned his great head to look directly at her.

The fury in his eyes was so great as he opened his mouth and projected a huge spout of flame towards her, that she almost cried out loud, but just as the flames were about to engulf her, she felt a sharp pain in her side and was pulled back to consciousness.

Faith woke to find Willow repeatedly poking her between the ribs with the point of her shoe.

Still groggy from sleep, she briefly debated ripping the witch's leg off and clobbering her with it but had to quickly abandon that plan when it became clear that she simply would not be able to summon the necessary energy.

Instead she settled for a glare and a threat.

"You snore, and you end up in the river. Just so we're clear."

"That's rich coming from you. I actually almost recast my locator spell at one point, because I was positive an entire community of lumberjacks had managed to sneak up on us and were all sawing at the same time."

"Funny," the younger girl muttered darkly. This was one of the few times where she was almost positive that she'd just had a Slayer dream. She'd never really had very many of those traditional visions before, or at least not until Willow cast her now infamous spell on the Potentials. Since then, she had had more and more odd dreams and most of them featured the Cheeseman in some capacity or other.

She'd thought about asking Buffy about him at one point, after a particularly vigorous nightmare in which she was strapped down on a table while the First and a giant crooning bat-like creature discussed how best to harvest her organs. The Cheeseman had appeared in the midst of this discussion and proceeded to place a BabyBell on each of her eyelids, - explaining that she would need them to pay the ferryman.

In the end she decided to keep the strange dreams to herself, she had learnt in prison that dreams were particularly revealing about a person's insides and Buffy was one of the last people she wanted poking around her psyche. Nevertheless, these visions made her very nervous and a nervous Faith had a tendency to lash out and cause bodily harm.

Shaking herself mentally, Faith decided to save freaking about odd dreams for another, less boring time. Willow had already fallen asleep she noticed, the older girl was obviously more exhausted after her day trekking than either of them had realised.

Despite her assurances to the witch that she would no doubt soon become disenchanted with the woods surrounding her, Faith was feeling no such thing. Her boredom stemmed from the lack of being able to explore her new territory - night was usually active time for her and it felt weird to be sitting next to a fire, hugging her knees.

Sure, she had initially been a little surprised to find herself in a forest when moments before she had been groaning at her TV, threatening it with ritual disembowelment, but strange otherworldly woodland areas did have their own unique charm and anyway, it wasn't like she'd had anything specific planned for the upcoming weekend.

Therefore, she'd taken the whole magical relocation issue with far more aplomb than anyone – herself included – would have expected. Ok, so the situation would be vastly improved by the absence of a certain irritating redhead, but beggars could not be choosers and neither – apparently - could accidental inter-dimensional travellers.

However, she had been expecting, no - hoping for a little more in the way of wildlife. If the trashy science fiction novels Andrew (and to a lesser extent Xander) was so fond of were to be believed, herself and Willow ought to have been attacked at least ten times over by now,- by vicious man-eating wolves or rabid killer bears from out of space, perhaps even giant bladder-ridden squirrels.

Eyeing the sleeping girl before her and the darkness shrouded woods surrounding the two of them, Faith sat, hugging her knees tightly. Not so much as a mouse was moving in the darkness beyond their meagre fire.

"It was quiet…too quiet," she whispered in the darkness, sniggering softly to herself. Sometimes she really missed Sunnydale.

Faith was snapped out of her wildlife ridden reverie when she felt an unnatural presence moving towards her.

She could never explain the feeling she got when a demon approached her, the closest she came to explaining it was a serious case of the Goosebumps, as if someone were walking over her grave.

Once alerted, she stooped slouching near the fire and drew herself up to search the darkness surrounding their impromptu camp with her Slayer sense enhanced eyesight. She thought she could see something moving about thirty paces ahead and slightly to the right of her position, but whatever it was that was moving out there was too dark to see properly.

She was about to poke Willow in order to wake the other girl, when said Wicca woke with a start.

"My perimeter spells just went off! Something's moving out there."

"Way ahead of ya, Red," came Faith's familiar drawl in the darkness, "it's over there…can you make out what it is at all?"

Concentrating on the vague direction towards which Faith was waving, Willow caught a decidedly unpleasant sensation… whoever or whatever was crawling around out there had some serious darkness attached to them.

"It isn't pretty; whatever it is. Feels really nasty, like a pit of sentient razorblades if that makes any sense…" there she trailed off as the creature in question stepped into sight.

Facing the two girls was a man wrapped in a black cloak, hood pulled low over his face, very effectively hiding his features. He stood silently, cloak utterly still in the slight breeze that had picked up over night. He seemed to be regarding each girl in turn, while hissing faintly, before he slowly began to move towards them.

"Uh…can we help you?" asked Willow nervously.

When the stranger failed to answer, she tried once more.

"Er…do you understand what I'm saying? Parlaiz vous Anglais? Sprechen Sie Englisch? Uhm…anything?"

Once more the stranger failed to answer, instead moving closer. He did not walk so much as slink along gracefully,- if Willow had not already felt that the man facing her wasn't altogether human, his movement would have decided her opinion on the subject as his sinuous strides were very much reminiscent of Spike on the prowl.

Gulping nervously, Willow edged closer to Faith and whispered out of the side of her mouth, "You ever read the Lord of the Rings?"

"Nope," came the reply, "saw the movies though."

"I thought they were a bit over-rated personally… anyway, are you thinking what I'm thinking?" asked Willow, carefully backing away from the man ahead of her.

"Possibly,' the Slayer murmured back, before she grabbed a stout burning branch from the fire and raised it in front of her, "Yo, creepy dude! We ain't got no mystical jewellery so you might as well just turn 'round and slither off the way you came."

"Uh huh, what she said," added Willow, nodding energetically, "No shiny gold rings here, no sir! All we have are these earrings from Tiffany's and you can't have those 'cos Buffy gave them to me for my birthday…" there she broke off because the man facing them again stopped moving. Slowly, in a manner no doubt meant to intimidate, the man pulled back his hood.

The face that greeted both girls sent them stumbling back in shock; under black lifeless looking hair was a visage one only met in nightmares and even then, not very often. Most of the features were unremarkable, except for the eyes which were highly noticeable in their absence. Instead, pale lifeless looking flesh glistened in the dim firelight, sickeningly reminiscent of a slug's underbelly.

"Holy crap man, what happened to your eyes!" came Faith's slightly inelegant yelp from the position she had jumped to, much as she would hated to admit it – even to herself - this stranger scared the hell out of her.

"Wow, that's gross," agreed a squealing Willow, adding in a slightly less shaky voice, "and if you don't mind my asking, just exactly how do you SEE?"

When the stranger once again failed to respond, Faith addressed the older girl, the disgust in her voice carrying clearly, "Ew, you don't think that maybe this is the dimension where they have plenty of shrimp but no eyeballs, do you? 'Cos if it is, I'll be wanting to make a complaint. That's just plain wrong."

Maybe it was the mention of shrimp, but the stranger suddenly hissed, "Hungry!" quite a feat considering there were no s's present in his exclamation, "You will be good to eat," he added in an unpleasantly hoarse voice, pointing and leering at Willow and Faith in turn, "and you I shall keep for later. Do you like games, little girl?"

"Gotta say, that's a definite no," came the Slayer's revolted reply.

"Not that I'm complaining or anything," added Willow sulkily from where she was hiding behind Faith, "it's not as if I'm really into the whole torture and rape thing, but how come I'm always the one who gets to be food? I can be playful. Occasionally I'm even kinky!"

"Wouldn't take it personally Red," soothed Faith, never losing sight of the thing slowly stalking nearer, "demons just wanna use me and loose me…it's a guy thing I guess. You on the other hand look yummy enough to eat; I reckon it's a backhanded sort of compliment really."

"Oh," came Willow's reply, "Well, I suppose that's alright then. In that case, I don't mind being designated food, as long as I don't actually get eaten, how's about that?"

"Very sporting of you," agreed the Slayer.

Swivelling his eyeless head between the two girls, the hooded man-thing hissed angrily, "Fear me mortals! I shall wear your eye-teeth around my neck and feed your bones to the trollocs!"

"Uh huh, sounds wicked," Faith responded, wondering absently whether trollocs were eyeless demon pets. At the same time, she was trying to calculate how best to go about killing the snaky looking man-thing. Judging by the ease of its movement, it would be a serious opponent in a fight, - doubly so considering the sword she saw glinting sinisterly at its side. Stumbling into an unknown tree-dimension had left her dangerously unarmed, the only weapons on hand were the flaming branch she had already equipped herself with, as well as the rocks which could be seen, liberally scattering the ground. Of course, there was also Willow. "Now there's a thought," she mumbled to herself.

"Willow," she called softly, "how are your feelings on the subject of fireballs?"

"Very positive," came the instant reply, "Will you be wanting cover only or direct assault?"

"Why not both," the Slayer responded, already moving towards the creepy eyeless thing before her, "I personally reckon that overkill is just enough kill."

"Now?" came the question in the dark, Willow had seemingly positioned herself a few paces back and to the left.

"Now!" agreed Faith, bursting into action. She reached the demon in three strides and quickly found that she had not overestimated his abilities, if anything, she had under-assessed them. It turned out that eyeless or not, the man-thing was quite capable of dodging both her and Willow's combined attacks easily while holding her at bay with his sword, though that didn't leave a lot of time for it to press an attack of his own.

Keeping the demon at a safe distance using her flaming branch, Faith waited for an opening. It came when one of Willows fireballs glanced off her opponent's side, leaving him momentarily unstable. He regained his balance almost immediately, but Faith had been waiting for this opportunity and seized it without second thought. Closing the distance between them, she roughly kicked the demon where she estimated his eyeless balls to be and with a sharp sideways wrench yanked the sword from his grasp. Almost simultaneously, one of Willow's fireballs reached its desired target and Faith leapt out of the creature's reach as he began to pinwheel in an attempt to rid himself of the flames.

"Stop, drop and roll," Willow quipped as Faith deftly decapitated the burning creature, then huffed moodily when he apparently failed to notice.

"Hello! You've literally just lost you head! Die already!" the Slayer told the twitching headless body. She'd dropped the demon's sword the second she chopped his head off, not wanting to be in contact with it any longer than necessary. She wasn't sure what it was that bothered her so much about the weapon, but it felt wrong in her hands, almost as if it was as evil as its owner.

Both girls moved to stand out of the jerking body's reach and were regarding it silently until finally Willow asked, "Should we maybe be dismembering it some more?"

Thoughtfully, Faith replied, "Don't think so. Feels pretty dead to me…maybe these things are like chickens, too stupid to realise when you chop their heads off."

"Maybe," Willow agreed, adding, "I don't really feel like sleeping anymore, shall we just carry on walking?"

"Might as well," the Slayer replied, "who knows how many more of these bastards are out creeping through the woods. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner we reach this village of yours, the better. I don't suppose there's any chance that it's populated with eyeless demon spawn, is there?"

"Not to my knowledge," came the Wicca's answer from the fire pit where she was busy heaping wet sand onto the dying flames, "I think it's just a normal old village…or as I said before, cows."

Scanning the once more silent forest, Faith nodded silently to herself. It was just as well. Truth be told, she wasn't feeling especially keen to face another of those creatures anytime soon. They really were quite unspeakably hideous, - not to mention ever so slightly intimidating.


	5. Off to see the Wizard

­­Right, slight mistake in the last chapter, which has been pointed out by loyal reviewer ele:….of course Willow left her shoes back at the lab, so couldn't have poked Faith with them….I tried to correct the error but lack the technical expertise to figure out how to edit my posts. Whoops! Let's just pretend Willow used one of Faith's shoes. It could happen.

>>

­­

Willow was grateful to be lying on her stomach, regardless of the many pebbles and assorted sticks pricking her body through the thin shirt she was wearing.

Hours of barefoot marching through woods at nighttime had left her tender feet in desperate need of some serious R&R and she had been more than relieved when around lunchtime, they finally came in view of the village they had been striving towards.

At least Willow assumed it to be lunchtime, she had been strangely comforted to note that indeed this world possessed not only just the one sun, but that it rose from the east as expected.

Even more reassuring was the fact that the village was indeed just that, a typical village one would not have been surprised to find in Europe during perhaps the 17th century, complete with assorted animals and outlying farms, though none lay in the direction Faith and herself had emerged from when they came stumbling out of the forest. The village was nestled snugly between the forest and the little stream which had so faithfully lead them into civilization and could be seen to join a river not too far in the distance.

Willow was a little relieved to find figures – very human, two eyed figures – weaving between the houses of the little townlet they were observing, figures apparently intent on typical village style tasks, whatever those might be. In all honesty, she felt somewhat incapable of caring about anything much other than the state of her very sore body, her feet were smarting, her stomach was growling and Faith was muttering under her breath.

"Hmm? I didn't catch that last part," Willow admitted shamefacedly when she realised that the Slayer had been addressing her.

"I said, something seems fishy about this place," the younger girl repeated impatiently. Willow and Faith had found an excellent position to observe the on going's in the village from, a slight incline one might in an optimistic moment be given to call a hill. Willow, in her infinite Wicca wisdom, had cast an amazingly useful magnifying spell, which allowed the two girls to study the village in all its aspects. Seriously, she thought to herself, this spell was way better than binoculars.

"Why?" came Willow's startled question, not that Faith was surprised to hear it, "seems perfectly normal to me."

"And when was the last time you were thrown into an alternative dimension complete with late medieval villages?" she asked, conveniently forgetting that she lacked the same credentials, "this place is way too orderly and…clean…and look, what is an army doing in a sleepy little village like this?"

Willow looked around in astonishment, "what army? I don't see anyone."

Faith rolled her eyes at the world in general, useful with the spells she might be, but the witch's observational skills left quite a lot to be desired for, "Look, do you see that building near the square, opposite the fountain? Kinda beige, tiled roof, with a sign hanging outside? Well, two to one says that's the village inn."

Willow squinted in the direction Faith had indicated, unconsciously zooming in on the building in question, "Ok, I see it."

"Cool. Now, do you see that fat, unnaturally jolly looking bald man under the sign talking to some dude in a white cloak?" Faith asked, lying flat on her back and looking up at the skies.

"Uhm…yeah, I see them. Why?" Willow asked, watching the couple Faith had pointed out to her. They seemed to be mid conversation, and though she couldn't hear what was being said it seemed to her as if the fat man was deferring to the other, and not very subtly either.

"Right, I reckon Fatty is the innkeeper and the dude in the white cape is some kind of military. I've seen at least four others in that get-up around the village, and all of them in pairs…totally looks like a patrol of some kind and I bet he's their boss. What I wanna know is where they're staying and what they're up to. It would really suck if it turns out that we're in the middle of a war zone or something."

Willow continued watching, brows wrinkled with thought. Now that Faith had given her explanation, she was forced to agree that it would be quite important to find out exactly what was going on around here and whether the army people were staying at the inn because it would mean that Willow and Faith would probably have to steer clear of it. Willow had learnt form the Initiative debacle that the military was to be avoided at every juncture, especially when it was otherworldly military, which might be embroiled in a war over ocular type issues. Shuddering slightly at the thought of two armies engaged in a tug-of-war over a giant sized eyeball, Willow came back to the issue at hand.

The two men seemed to have finished their conversation and the fat guy was hastily backing away from his erstwhile companion, all but tugging his non existent forelocks, while the cloaked man nodded his satisfaction and strode off into the distance. with his back turned, Willow could see something that looked like a sheperds crook embroidered over a golden sun on his back. The fat man wiped sweat from his brow and returned to the building the Slayer had claimed must be an inn and Willow was forced to agree that Faith had probably been right on all three counts. But that didn't mean she had to like it.

Turning to the other girl who was lying on her back, chewing on a strand of grass and absentmindedly watching clouds form, Willow became inexplicably angry. What right did Faith have to be so comfortable and at ease while she herself had sore feet and a growling tummy?

"Right, let's go then," she rasped, somewhat more harshly than she meant.

Faith simply looked at her steadily, "Go where?"

"Down to the village of course. We're not going to learn anything else from up here, and I think we should both eat something," then she added thoughtfully, "and I could really do with a pair of shoes."

"How do reckon we should get them? I have a feeling, that 'Hi, we're from another dimension, could you possibly clothe and feed us' isn't gonna do the trick," Faith replied with a dose of unnecessary sarcasm, "I don't think they'll take dollars and our clothes are blatantly not from around here, so call me crazy, but I really don't fancy attracting too much military attention."

"I know that," Willow replied uncharitably, Faith could be such a pain sometimes, "what I was going to suggest is that I cast a glamour on us so we blend in clothes wise and then we go down there and see what's what."

To her surprise, Faith looked at her consideringly before answering, "Actually, that might just be the most sensible thing you've said all day. But I think I should go on my own and you should stay here as back-up, you know, in case."

"In case of what?" growled Willow. She was quickly losing all the vestiges of good humour she had managed to hold on to over the last day, and the dark Slayer was seriously starting to get right upon her nose. Stay here indeed, and miss out on all the fun? Not hardly likely! She was tired and hungry and more than a little cranky, and she was going to be damned if she let Faith manoeuvre her into staying behind with nothing more than shrubbery for company.

"Just in case," came the overly casual reply.

"Well, I don't want to," Willow answered.

"I still think you should," was Faith's response.

"I'm not going to," answered Willow with a low growl.

"You should really consider it," came the laid-back retort, causing the Witch to snap.

"This is my resolve face Faith!" shouted Willow, "this is the same face I wore when I was all evil and skanky…and with the veins! You shouldn't mess with the veins, they nearly ended the world! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Wasn't there, didn't see it, couldn't possibly have cared less," smirked the Slayer.

"I am coming with you and that's final!" screamed Willow and blushed; she really hated the other girl for making her lose her temper so easily.

"Jeez, suit yourself," Faith answered, looking at Willow as if she were the one being unreasonable, "you don't have to make such a big deal out of it."

It was then that Willow made her decision: Faith was simply going to have to die.

Unfortunatelly, she might still need the irritating Slayer sometime in the future, so Willow decided to get her revenge in a slightly more subtle fashion. Smiling evilly, she concentrated and cast a complicated glamour over both Faith and herself. To her and Faith, they were still wearing the clothes, and in Faith's case, shoes they had arrived in. To anybody else, however, they were wearing long dresses like she had seen at a Renaissance Faire Tara had taken her to. Willow's gown was a soft green, with pale yellow embroidery at cuffs and throat. Out of pure contrariness, she clothed Faith in a pale pink and white dress that just looked plain wrong on the dark-haired girl.

Totally oblivious to the rose coloured monstrosity she was sporting, the Slayer started down the hill, with Willow snickering and not too far behind.

Faith was about ninety percent certain that they would meet one of the mysterious military patrols before entering the village and she was correct.

They had just joined a roughly paved road which seemed to lead towards the village centre, when two men in white stepped into their path. Able to inspect them more closely now that they were standing directly before her, Faith was interested to note that these cloak uniforms sported a gold sunburst on the left breast.

"You are unknown to us, citizen," said one, clearly addressing them, "state your purpose."

"Oh," Willow answered in a nervous breathy whisper which Faith guessed was not entirely fake, "my friend and I are simple travellers, just on our way through town."

"Do you walk in the light citizen?" one man asked them gruffly and Faith decided it sounded less like a question than an order.

"Uh, of course," she replied, not certain whether it was the correct answer, adding "Go light!"

Apparently this was the right thing to say as the men looked satisfied and wished them a good day. Nodding graciously at them both, Faith and Willow carried on walking until they were out of hearing range.

"What do you think that was all about?" Willow asked.

"Dunno," Faith replied, "maybe these guys have a vamp problem or something."

"Could be," Willow answered, though she did not think that the answer would be that simple, it was bright daylight after all "guess we'll find out soon enough."

Walking silently another few steps, Faith asked, "So how are we gonna get food and clothes? You gonna transmogrify some rocks into gold?"

"How do you know about transmogrification?" Willow asked, sounding bemused. She had indeed planned to do exactely that, once she got a good look at the kind of money she ought to copy.

The Slayer gave her a dirty look, "I have read Harry Potter you know. I'm not completely retarded."

"I never said you were," Willow answered, smiling placatingly. Just wait til we get home, she thought. Once Dawn and Andrew find out she likes Harry Potter, Faith's bad girl cred will be totally shot to hell.

Feeling a little perkier all of a sudden, Willow continued following Faith into the village, a light spring in her step.


End file.
